40K-ON! - Primaris Victoria
by Sketchdumb
Summary: Sister Superior Ritsu could be boring and guard the flank, or she could absolutely destroy the flank and those heavily entrenched cultists stopping the Sororitas advance along the way. It's no choice at all, is it?
1. Chapter 1

4.660.902.M41

Pale, milky-coloured clouds loomed low over the contested factory city of Irnassar. They seemed to press down on the city, to pressurise the violence occurring within it, focusing it into a symphony of urban combat. The arrhythmic thuds, crunches, and cracks of munitions large and small echoed through the streets, off the gray manufactorum walls, around the gargoyle-encrusted spires of cathedrals, down the plain residential boulevards, all littered with rubbish, bodies, waste, all abandoned by anyone except the armed and dangerous.

It was along a gloomy residential boulevard that the Adepta Sororitas Exorcist _Glorious Crescendo_ , clad in the blue-and-gold livery of the Order of the Avenging Choir, and bedecked with fleur-de-lies, sunbursts, aquilas, and other proper devotional decor, clanked along with frantic purpose. Emphasis on _frantic_ ; its overly-embellished armour was marred by still-fresh craters from krak grenades and rockets. Blocks behind it, furious wailing rose from a clutch of foiled would-be Traitor ambushers.

Hanging on for dear life on the Exorcist's right side was Sister Retributor Mio Akiyama, her gorgeous jet-black hair flying in the wind, clad in blue power armour edged with gold trim, heavy bolter clutched to her chest, her mind churning. The _Crescendo_ and its attached Battle-Sister squad–Squad Tainaka, Mio's squad–had survived the very recent ambush, but had been split off from the rest of the Fourth Bombardment Company. Sister Superior Nohi, commander of the Exorcist, didn't seem to want to relocate the other Sororitas vehicles; instead, she was driving deeper into the Traitor lines. Mio suspected her own Sister Superior had something to do with this.

The _Crescendo_ hit a particularly churned-up section of pavement and bucked wildly for several moments, during which Mio slammed against the Exorcist's organ pipes, crashed into the Battle-Sister to her left, and rediscovered those parts of her she'd strained in basic training. It brought back many memories, mostly dull, some bad, but a few good ones, mostly about goofing off with her best friends in the Sororitas. And speaking of friends, there was one she needed to talk to right now…

The Exorcist hit another bump and slammed Mio into the Sister beside her. "Sorry!" Mio yelled to her squadmate.

Blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned Tsumugi Kotobuki gave Mio a smile. "Nothing to be sorry about," she said. "Suffering together on a wild ride is one of the necessary experiences of friendship, isn't it?"

"Um, absolutely," Mio said. The Exorcist ceased bucking for a few moments, and Mio stepped across the tank's roof and to the raised command pulpit centered atop it. Two more Sisters stood shoulder-to-shoulder in it, the black-haired one trying to connect sheafs of cables together, the brown-haired one standing straight up, head thrust out, letting her short bangs whip in the wind.

Mio hauled herself up by her friend and unlikely commander Ritsu Tainaka, and yelled in her ear, "Ritsu! With all due respect, we are _lost!_ Lost! L-O-S-T! We need to turn around, find the rest of the company, and regroup, not run around like a headless grox!"

Ritsu glanced at Mio, and Mio saw the expression she always feared on her friend: fearless excitement. "Mio," Ritsu shouted back, over the roar of the engine, "we aren't lost, we have an opportunity! We know the advance is stuck in deeper than Yui at a free banquet! We know we're on the enemy's flank! We're going to wheel into the enemy's flank, blaze a trail of death and glory down their back line, and go from zero to hero in the eyes of the Order!"

Mio gawked. She knew Ritsu, and she had expected as cracked a plan as this, but the fact Ritsu could say it with a smile and without a trace of sarcasm still surprised her.

Ritsu seemed to remember something, and frowned at Mio. "And don't forget," she shouted over the squeal of metal treads grinding on cobblestones as the Exorcist leaned into a hard right turn, "that I'm Sister Superior, not you!"

"I know, and I don't care!" Mio retorted. "This is crazy! We're alone! The vox is hit-and-miss at best!" Mio adjusted her grip as the Exorcist advanced up an incline. "Ritsu! Please, for your friends, for me, turn around!"

Ritsu patted Mio on the head, and it took all of Mio's self-control to not give Ritsu the traditional dope slap. "For the last time, Mio-chan, I've got it all under control. We will be fine."

Ritsu turned away and called over the squad vox, "Driver, this spot's good! Halt!"

The Exorcist braked hard, and Mio was thrown into Ritsu as the tank ground to a stop. There was a yelp from the right side of the Exorcist, followed by a thump. Ritsu glanced right, and called, "Really, Yui? That's the third time! Get back up here!"

Mio peered over the command throne, and saw the Exorcist had stopped on a road running along an elevated ridge in the landscape, one populated by a row of small, desiccated storage units. It was just high enough to overlook the surrounding five- and six-storey buildings around them. Mio looked west, saw Irnassar's cityscape stretch out for a kilometre, and then open up into the sprawling Construction Fields, on the south end of which the Avenging Choir's Sisters and their PDF allies fought an entrenched force of rebels, heretics, and worse, located on the north end of the fields. Intelligence estimated at least a battalion of renegades, cultists, and turncoat PDF and Guard were dug in above the fields. If the Avenging Choir couldn't turn the battle in their favor soon, their losses and any kind of victory would likely become untenable.

Armoured boots rang on the Exorcist's hull, and Battle-Sister Yui Hirasawa scrambled onto the tank, her flamer clanking against her armour, her adorable medium-length brown hair in complete disarray, her eyes wide and full of excitement. She was basically the same Yui from the scholam years ago, except slightly over a decade older, and now able to break a traitor's neck with her bare (power-armoured) hands.

"Mio!" Yui said, "Did I bruise anything?" She pushed her face into Mio's, and Mio had to back away. Yui's pretty, heart-shaped face was dusty and dirty from her fall off the Exorcist, but was none the worse for wear.

"No, you're fine," Mio said. "Emperor alone knows how you do it."

"Okay! Thanks!" Yui began fussing over her hair, and only managed to make it into a bird's nest in her haste. Mio sighed, and stepped up to Yui and took her hands.

"Slow down," she said. She glanced around at the dark, quiet buildings, and pulled Yui down to a crouch. "And get down, there might be enemies about."

"Azsua!" Ritsu said. "The cables are hooked up, right?"

Petite, precise, precious Azusa Nakano disentangled herself from deep inside the command throne, swatted her long dark bangs out of her eyes, and snapped, "No, they're not, ma'am! People keep tripping over me and knocking me down!" She took a deep breath, and added, more calmly, "Just give me some room and thirty seconds, please."

Ritsu said over the squad vox, "Nohi, status." Apparently, the squad vox now extended to the Exorcist's crew as well.

Sister Superior Nohi, commander of the _Glorious Crescendo,_ answered the hail smartly and fervently. _"What do you need, ma'am?"_

"Just making sure everything's going fine," Ritsu said. She looked west, to the Traitor entrenchments a kilometre distant, and Mio followed her gaze. Red beams of heavy las-fire snapped every few seconds from the foe's trenches, piercing the lines of the stalled Sororitas advance. "That's our target. Get me a solid auspex scan of their positions, so I can plan our next move."

" _Yes, ma'am!"_ Nohi said. Mio sagged with anxiety. Nohi, for whatever reason, seemed to think Ritsu was the God-Emperor's right hand made manifest. She had backed Ritsu in every decision ever, and if the way she shouted orders to her crew was any indication, her attitude wouldn't change anytime soon.

Mio swept her surroundings again, and involuntarily drew in a breath. There was a flicker of motion among a jumble of groundcars several blocks north. Shadows sprinted and crouched in the muted overcast light. Mio swung her heavy bolter up. "Movement, north, in the cars!" she yelled.

Yui grabbed her bolt pistol and aimed up the street. Ritsu ducked into the command throne and unlimbered her own bolter. There was a squawk from Azusa as Ritsu squished her deep into the depths of the command throne. Mio saw a flash of blond hair in the left of her peripheral vision, as Tsumugi crouched beside the command throne and aimed her bolter north.

Ritsu's grin now split her face from ear to ear. She extended an arm and pointed dramatically towards the car jumble. "Sisters," she said, "give 'em–"

A muffled whoosh cut Ritsu off, and a blast of smoke jetted from behind one of the cars. Mio saw the glint of a metal warhead, whirled around, collared Ritsu with her right arm, and pulled them both down. "Missile!" she shouted.

The krak missile slammed square into the flank of the Exorcist. Hot smoke washed over Mio, the shriek of rending metal rendered her hearing tinny and echoey, the biting, almost rotten stench of superheated metal met Mio's nose. The world rocked for a moment, and then stabilized. The underwhelming snap and crack of las-fire dimly made it through Mio's temporarily-impaired hearing. It was met a moment later by the angry chug of bolters firing.

Mio shoved Ritsu behind the command throne, hurriedly raised her heavy bolter, and fired a short burst into the smoke. Red las-beams pinged off the Exorcist's armour; in answer, yellow bolter shells zipped out into the grey smoke. Mio unhooked a frag grenade from her belt one-handed, bit the pin out, and heaved it behind the rubble. A few seconds later, she heard the crump of the grenade's detonation, and there was a several-second lull in enemy fire.

"Hose 'em!" Ritsu yelled, raising her bolt pistol and popping off suppressing shots. "Nohi, angle, angle!"

The Exorcist shuddered, and then reversed several meters, turning to angle its armour at forty-five degrees, forcing the Sisters to grab for handholds. Tsumugi was the first to recover and resume firing. The smoke was slowly clearing; Mio saw Mugi's fire stitch across the groundcars, leaving torn metal and glittering shrapnel in its wake. Mio took aim at the right side of the street, focused on the tiny, shifting shadows she could just barely see against the grey background…

…and lost her focus completely as a volcanic roar from behind her blotted out all thought. Another wave of smoke washed over her, this time scented with the sulfurous chemical tang of explosives and propellants. A missile shot from the Exorcist's organ pipes, and hurtled into the heavens on a streamer of fire. It produced enough smoke that Mio lost sight of it, but several seconds later, she felt the missile's impact shake the Exorcist, and saw the bloom of angry orange through the smoke.

As the sound of the explosion echoed away, incoming fire dropped off completely, to the ambient tune of crumbling stone and groaning metal. The smoke cleared again, and Mio saw the missile had hit a three-storey structure on the street's right side, and collapsed it across the street and groundcars, leaving a massive pile of collapsed stone and twisted metal girders and sheeting, all clouded by a massive pall of dust. New fires flickered here and there. The street was quiet once again, but the tense sort of quiet, of someone holding their breath and hoping the worst did not occur again.

Ritsu poked her head out of the command throne, scanned the area, and shouted, "Sound off, damage and injuries!"

"I'm good," Mio said.

"Present," Azusa coughed, extracting herself from the command throne.

"Present, situation normal, ready to serve," Tsumugi said.

There was a pause; Yui was still messing with her hair. Mio elbowed her, and Yui jumped. "Eeek! Uh, I'm here, Ritsu! Er, ma'am."

Nohi said, _"One casualty, light injuries, still combat-capable. Long-range vox is fried for good."_

Ritsu glanced north, at the smoldering pile of rubble. "Mio, Yui, keep a watch on the street," she ordered.

"Affirmative," Mio said, hauling herself half-behind the nearest organ pipe and orienting her heavy bolter towards the street. She stilled herself and listened. She heard the crackle of flames from the rubble, the grumble of the Exorcist's engine, the near-silent whirr of her backpack's power generator, and a series of clicks and shuffling noises as Azusa finished plugging in the cables wreathing the command throne.

There was something else, in the distance, besides the rumble of combat. Mio could hear a distant and unnerving tune; not just a sound, a rhythm, some kind of music, and it was not pleasing. It made ominous wheezing and moaning noises. It warbled and skirled in ways that, even at a nearly-inaudible distance, caused Mio's gut to pucker with anxiety.

Mio whispered a prayer for courage to Saint Katherine and focused on her duty. She squinted at the chunks of rockcrete and crushed cars. She saw, just briefly, shadows pop out, and then vanish back into cover.

"Ritsu," Mio said, "I have movement in the rubble."

"Mio, Yui, suppressing fire," Ritsu said. She asked, "Azusa, how are the cables?"

There was a final click and a relieved sigh from behind Mio. "Cables are finished, ma'am," Azusa said.

Mio missed anything Ritsu might have said, for she raised her heavy bolter and swept a long burst across the rubble. Yui fired several bursts of her own. Their combined fire chipped away at the rockcrete chunks and twisted metal, sowing new lines of smoke across the rubble pile.

To Mio's dismay, las-fire shot back at them from the sides of the street, one building down from the pile of rubble. "Ritsu! Enemy fire from the north, both sides of the street!" she called.

"I can see, Mio!" Ritsu shouted, ducking as las-beams skirled and sparked off the command throne. "Squad, hang on! Nohi, get us off this hill!"

" _Yes, ma'am!"_ Nohi said.

Mio grabbed ahold of the organ pipe, and said, "Yui, hold on!"

Yui grabbed her own handhold, and just in time. The Exorcist lurched backwards and reversed back down the slope. Mio and Yui were thrown against the organ pipes; Ritsu and Azusa huddled in the command throne, with Tsumugi leaning so far into the throne to hang on she was basically crammed in it as well. Moments later, the _Crescendo's_ treads screamed against the cobbles as Nohi arrested its momentum, and the tank skidded to a stop at the bottom of the slope.

"Nohi, get us out of LOS of that hill," Ritsu ordered. The Exorcist reversed again, and Nohi positioned them behind the corner of the nearest building.

Ritsu stood up in the command throne and put a hand to her ear. She stayed like that for a few moments, and then asked, "Can anyone else hear some kind of music? Nasty weird music, probably heretic music?"

Mio said, "I could hear it on the hill. It was coming from the battle to the west."

There was a general sort of quiet as the squad listened. Over the rumble of the engine, Mio once again could make out the unsettling song echoing over the city.

Ritsu looked back at Mio and met her gaze. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "Are we going to let these heretic saps pollute the good air of this planet with their profane excuse for music?"

"No!" Yui replied. Ritsu's smile returned, and she extended a beseeching hand towards Mio and Yui.

"Are we going to get up and teach those bags of filth a lesson about _real_ music?" Ritsu said.

"Yes!" Yui and Tsumugi chorused.

"And by teach," Ritsu went on, "I mean teach 'em with the business end of the bolter, melta, and holy flamer! Am I right?"

"Absolutely, yes ma'am!" Yui, Mugi, and this time Nohi shouted, without a trace of irony or caution.

Azusa glanced at Mio; Mio gave her a tiny shrug. Ritsu was on one of her rolls, and nothing short of the Canoness or death would stop her.

Ritsu pointed at Mio. "Mio, Mugi! You two are on overwatch! Azusa, Yui, get the drum kit and extra bolters out!"

Mio put two and two and Ritsu together, realized what the answer was, and opened her mouth to desperately try to dissuade her best friend from the worst plan ever. Ritsu beat Mio to it, putting one armoured finger on Mio's lips.

"Mio-chan," Ritsu said sweetly, giving Mio her best soulful eyes look, "you're my best friend, my rock, my sister in the faith. I can't do this without you. Trust me, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have total confidence we can pull it off." She stared deep into Mio's eyes, and Mio felt happy memories and friendship fuzzies overriding her terror of death by stupidity. "Please, Mio, can you back me up on this?" Ritsu asked.

Mio felt her lips tighten reflexively. She sucked in a huge breath through her nose, and let it out in a gust of a sigh, and forced herself to be calm. Or at least to appear calm. "Ritsu," she said, taking Ritsu's hand and squeezing it, "I trust you. Please don't get us killed uselessly."

Ritsu's grin stretched so wide the corners of her mouth were nearly hidden by her bangs. "That's the spirit, Mio! I knew I could count on you!"

Tsumugi called, "Ritsu, what am I overwatching for?"

"Traitors, heretics, sinners, dregs, vagrants, music critics, and Sister Sakura," Ritsu said, climbing off the Exorcist. "Yui, one side!"

Mio stood up, positioned herself in front of the command throne, and swept the heavy bolter back and forth across the intersection before them. Tsumugi knelt beside Mio, on her left, bolter raised and ready. Yui, Ritsu, and Azusa made several trips to and from the top of the Exorcist, hauling out equipment wrapped in cloth and tarp. Ritsu unwrapped them and began assembling a sturdy-looking drum kit around the command throne. Yui and Azusa began to unwrap extra boltguns and attach them to the oodles of cables Azusa had spent half an hour hooking up.

Mio, still scanning the intersection, saw a half-squad of figures dash towards an open doorway. "Hostiles in the intersection!" she shouted, firing in unison with Tsumugi. Brass casings clanked onto the hull of the Exorcist, and mass-reactive shells gouged new craters around the doorway, and blasted three of the traitors all over the ground before it in a mess of limbs and viscera.

"Keep them down!" Ritsu ordered, her voice muffled by the bass drum she was holding. "'Scuse me," she added, bumping into Mio's backpack as she squirmed by.

Mio swore as her aim was thrown off. A row of saints sculpted on the second floor of the building under fire were obliterated by the misfired bolts. "Ritsu, watch it!" she snapped.

"That's Sister Superior Ritsu, Mio!"

A heretic edged into view, one arm raised, probably holding a grenade. Tsumugi fired and felled him. Mio scanned the intersection, scanned the buildings, saw no hostiles. She listened again. To her dismay, in the near distance, she could hear unfamiliar vehicle engines within a kilometer. The way sound waves bounced around the architecture of the city, she couldn't pinpoint the exact direction, only that the non-Sororitas engine sounds were approaching from the north and east. And there was another noise over that, over even the mass of weapons-fire to the west, the distant hollow roar noise of incoming aircraft.

"Ritsu!" Mio called, "I have unidentified vehicle sounds to the north and east! There are aircraft incoming, from the…the east as well!"

Ritsu appeared to Mio's right. "Vehicles to the north and east, aircraft to the east, got it," she said. She turned around and got back to the drum kit. "Yui! Turn that tom over! Yes, like that!"

Mio saw movement in the windows of the building across the intersection, and aimed her heavy bolter at them. A moment later, she saw a dot of light grey against the black square of the window as the heretic raised his head, and she fired a burst. The window's bottom rim was torn to pieces, and presumably, so was the heretic. The vehicle sounds were getting closer, and the roar of the aircraft was rising steadily in volume.

The milky sky above was suddenly alive with bright yellow streamers of anti-aircraft fire, originating from the west, probably from the traitors' lines. Mio looked up as the roar of the aircraft reached its zenith, and saw multiple angular shapes slash overhead, heading for the traitor's lines. One was caught by the AA shells, and curved into a sharp downward turn, impacting a kilometer or so away with a bass thud and a plume of smoke. Mio caught the fighters' silhouettes right before they disappeared, and saw they were Avenger Strike Fighters.

"Ritsu, the aircraft were ours! Avengers!" Mio said. Moments later, she heard the distant buzz of their weaponry, and the thumps of heavy munitions. She waited and watched the sky, and saw the aircraft reappear, much smaller, already kilometers away, rising back into the sky.

"Super!" Ritsu said. "Azusa, pass me that cable!"

Mio glanced behind her. The drum kit had been set up around the command throne, and now Ritsu, Yui, and Azusa were hooking up the extra boltguns directly to the command throne, so that six boltguns in all now presented their muzzles towards the Exorcist's front. Ritsu was setting up ammo boxes full of bolter feed belts, and loading those into the boltguns. The cables ran from the boltguns to simple pressure triggers on the drums and cymbals. Someone playing a speedy tune on the drum kit could now put out half a squad's worth of small-arms fire.

"Ritsu," Mio said, "I don't even know where to start."

A blush of pride suffused Ritsu's cheeks. "Then neither will the Canoness," she said. She finished loading the last boltgun, and stood up and surveyed her handiwork. "Azusa, Yui, report!"

"I'm done!" Yui said, standing up, overbalancing, and nearly falling backwards off the Exorcist.

"Done, ma'am," Azusa said, staring at the whole assembly around the command throne. "With all due respect, what's the purpose of this?"

"Don't you have eyes?" Ritsu asked, spreading her hands. "I play the drums. The bolters fire. Heretics die to the music of the Emperor. Simple, right?"

Azusa looked worried. "I'm…er…I think the Canoness and the Mechanicus wouldn't see it that way," she said.

"Me, worry about what the cogboys think? Hah!" Ritsu and stepped into the command throne, patting Azusa's pauldron. "All you do with the Mechanicus, Azu-nyan, is butter them up when they help you, and ignore them when they don't." She called over the squad vox, "Nohi, two things before we go. One, do we have flares? Two, how is your gunner at firing on the move?"

" _Yes and great, ma'am!"_ Nohi replied.

"Super!" Ritsu said. She looked over the drum-and-bolter arrangement, seemed to decide it was good, opened up a weapon case, and pulled a pair of drumsticks out. "Nohi, laud-hailers on, twenty percent vox," she ordered. "Testing, one, two…"


	2. Chapter 2

Crouched in the dirt behind a wrecked Sororitas Rhino, pinned down by screaming mortar rounds and las-fire, two women in her command squad slain already, Canoness Commander Patricia attempted to direct the mess the assault had become. She examined the tactical readout of the battle on a dataslate with her left hand, held her bolt pistol in her right, and was hunched right by Sister Ami, who had the vox-set.

The construction fields should have been lightly defended, according to all intelligence sources. The bulk of the fighting had taken place farther southeast, near the Ecclesiarchy and Administratum sections of the city, and Patricia had thought the fields would be ripe for the taking. Maybe intel had been wrong. Maybe it was the fact that, five minutes into the assault, two entire companies of PDF had suddenly turned on the Sororitas and loyal PDF. Patricia expected some form of penance and punishment when she returned to the convent, if not worse. If she even made it out alive at all.

The hiss of las-bolts against metal, the whoosh of bolter-rounds and the cough of the guns firing those same rounds, the constant scream and thump of mortar rounds dropping, and the damned warbling music braying from the Traitors' lines formed a suffocating cacophony of noise that could undo a lesser woman's resolve. Even Patricia, veteran Sister and Canoness that she was, had to make an effort to focus on the incoming communications from the other elements of the battle as relayed by Ami. The right flank had just lost a Rhino, immobilized by a hostile lascannon, and the squad debarking it was pinned down. The same situation was repeating itself, or already had happened, across the construction fields, where traitor PDF, unexpected mines, and enemy mortar fire made the safety of hard cover much less certain. The turncoats were finally being mopped up by the rear elements of the Sororitas force, at least. Patricia ordered the pinned squad to stay down, and Sister Ami passed it on.

Patricia glanced left at one of her bodyguards, a Celestian with a scarred face, a head of lightning-white hair, and a meltagun in her hands. She was squatted by the end of the Rhino, occasionally glancing around the corner of the wrecked machine.

"Sakura," Patricia said, "can we move?"

"Negative!" Sakura shouted. "Nearest cover is thirty meters away, enemy fire is too heavy." She pulled back around the corner as a hail of las-bolts chewed at the Rhino and the hard-packed earth. She glanced back at Patricia, and then up, and shouted, "Ma'am, down!"

Patricia dove for the dirt, skidded across the hard earth, and heard the snap of a las-bolt overhead. To her right, up on the service gantry of a treaded crane, several ragged figures were aiming and shooting at the Sororitas command squad. Vox-Sister Ami stepped between Patricia and the traitors, giving the Canoness the moment she needed to unlimber her bolt pistol and pop several shells off at the gantry. Lines of bolter fire converged on the traitors, killing two of them. Then the hot breath and the hungry rasp of Sakura's meltagun washed over Patricia, and a cone of superheated air hit the gantry, softening it to malleable orange metal, and crisping the remaining traitor in a burst of flame and vaporising flesh.

Patricia leaned on the flank of the Rhino, let her hammering heart cool down. "Ami," she said, "order the Avengers to make another run."

"Yes, ma'am."

As the echoes of the firefight died away, Patricia heard something else among the clamour of battle. She edged up to Sakura's corner. There, in the background, bumping up against the wailing dirge broadcast by the Traitors, was another song. It was almost as jarring as the unholy music of the foe, but only because it was inordinately cheerful and upbeat, and completely out of place on the battlefield.

Sakura went still for a few moments. "I recognize that, ma'am," she said.

Patricia's forehead wrinkled as she tried to process a mix of confusion and relief. "Yes, that's Squad Tainaka's music," she said. She remembered something, and called to Ami, "Squad Tainaka was assigned to cover the Fourth Bombardment Company, correct?"

"One moment, ma'am," Ami said. There was a few moments, while the sounds of the battlefield cracked and snarled around them. Then she said, "Correct, ma'am, Squad Tainaka was to protect the Fourth Bombardment…wait, stand by…"

Patricia glanced back and forth. Enemy fire was lessening towards the east, she noticed. The vox-Sister said, "Ma'am, one Exorcist from the Fourth Bombardment, the _Glorious Crescendo,_ has been sighted among the heretics, heading west."

Patricia consciously forced her jaw to stay shut and not drop open. She shoved past Sakura and glanced out around the Rhino.

The Traitors had dug in on the north end of the massive depression that formed the construction fields. The depression rose to meet the city in two tiers, the first which was made up of fabrication and storage structures, the second which was level with the city proper and populated with administrator structures and the monorails for some of the larger cranes. The gray-and-tan striped layers of rockcrete and hard-packed soil that formed the two tiers were partly obscured by surging clouds of smoke. Bumpy lines of revetments and bunkers peered through the smoke, las-shots and bolter-fire blasting from them. However, an increasing amount of the traitors' fire was being redirected to fire along their flank, to the east. Through the smoke, Patricia saw a blue-and-gold blob, about the size of her thumbnail, charging parallel to the Traitors' lines with absolute abandon. Even as Patricia watched, a jet of yellow-orange shot from the Exorcist, arced up and ahead four hundred meters, and came down near a bunker on the top tier.

The volume of enemy fire began to ebb like a wave rolling back out to the ocean. Patricia tore a smoke grenade off her belt, armed it, and threw it out into the open ground. As white smoke surged up, providing concealment for a few brief moments, Patricia shouted, "Squad, on me, advance to cover!" and dashed toward a fallen crane thirty meters away.

They crashed into the twisted metal and churned-up dirt in a clatter of ceramite and weapons. Patricia rolled up to a crouch, and ordered, "Vox, order full advance, full advance! Take advantage of our impromptu flanker!"

Mio couldn't hear herself think.

Ritsu was playing the drums for Fluffy Time, but at double speed and in the style of the ancient "heavy metal" discs she listened to when the more uptight Sister Superiors weren't around. The hard snap of the snares, the crash of the cymbals, the boom of the bass drum, blasted over the laud-hailers (set at one hundred percent, of course) overrode coherent thought and replaced it with a fury that left Mio's spirit on fire, her trigger finger itchy, and her soul hungry to kick some righteous ass.

And kick righteous ass Mio did, standing behind and right of the command throne, backed up against the _Crescendo's_ organ pipes, sweeping her heavy bolter back and forth across the enemy lines. The squad and Exorcist were charging straight west along the main boulevard of the lower tier of the construction fields, running over panicking heretics and demolishing their crude fortifications, made of crates, groundcars whole and wrecked, tyres for giant transport trucks, and pieces of rubble. On their left, short-term storage yards were clustered, made of light buildings, four-metre security fences, and motor pools repurposed into ammo dumps and strongpoints. On their right, Mechanicus fabrications facilities rose from the ground like bizarre trees, or four-story-high internal organs frozen in metal and decorated all over with the (now-defaced) cog-skull.

Ritsu's frantic drumming was eating up ammunition for the bolters at a frightening speed. With every strike of her drumstick against a snare, tom, or cymbal, one of the six bolters would fire a shell. With Ritsu going at the drums with twice her usual zeal, the front of the _Crescendo_ was barely visible beyond the sheets of fire bursting from the bolters' muzzles. Obviously, no one was standing on the front of the Exorcist; Yui and Azusa were on Ritsu's left, and Tsumugi was kneeling just in front of Mio, picking off any enemies that Mio missed.

Eighty metres ahead, from a perch among a clutch of smokestacks, Mio saw the backblast of a missile launch bloom. "Missile, two o' clock!" she shouted.

" _Missile, two o' clock, copy!"_ Nohi said. Mio could barely hear her.

"What?" Ritsu said, over the crashing finale of Fluffy Time.

"Down!" Mio said, dropping to one knee, and ceasing fire to grab an organ pipe.

Nohi sent the Exorcist into an honest-to-God-Emperor drift, slinging its front right fifteen degrees. The missile missed anyway, but only by a little; it screamed past, and Mio heard it detonate against the boulevard behind them.

Tsumugi snapped a burst off at a heretic dashing from a doorway, a grenade in each hand. His head vanished in a spray of red gore and shattered bone, and then Mio's attention was forcibly redirected as Nohi accelerated and sent the Exorcist hurtling down the street, regaining any speed they had lost. Mio stood back up, wavering with the motion of the tank, and stitched a long burst of heavy-calibre shells over the heads of a zigzagging revetment on their right. She hit nothing, but the heretics manning the revetment kept their heads down, and Mugi took the opportunity to throw a grenade at them.

The revetment whizzed past, and Mio saw a series of parking and storage lots approaching, and beyond that an open intersection for one of the main ingress-egress routes for the construction fields. It seemed remarkably clear, too clear. Mio made sure her ammo feed was clean and free of grit, and then realized what was bothering her.

There was little to no enemy fire pummeling the fields to the south. They had to be reorienting their fire. The Exorcist rampaging through their lines could be their only other target.

"Ritsu, the traitors are–" Mio started, and never finished, because a foundry's worth of lasguns suddenly opened up, all at once, a tangled haze of red beams snapping off the Exorcist's armor, searing the organ pipes, and scouring Mio's armor. Las-bolts squealed as they vaporised tiny, precise holes in the cymbals and toms of Ritsu's drum kit. Mio felt the combined heat of the massed fire on her face, felt her lips and eyes drying out. She fired for effect, spraying shells across the right arc of the Exorcist.

"Nohi, smoke!" Ritsu called, segueing without pause into Don't Say Lazy. The smoke launchers bristling along the _Crescendo's_ flanks burped, and off-white smoke engulfed the Exorcist. It was none too soon; Mio heard the air sizzle as full-sized lascannons opened up, their arm-sized beams punching bright red lines through the air far too close to the Exorcist. The tank rocked as one beam hit home, but there was no explosion, no screams of agony over the vox, only a low-key groan of stressed armour.

Through the tinnitus caused by overexposure to gunfire, Mio heard the painful screech of ammo feeds going dry. Ritsu swore casually, "Holy feth, that's it? Azusa, Mugi, reload the guns!" She kicked something in the command throne, and the remaining bolters ceased firing, though Ritsu drummed on. "Green range!" she called. "Come on, ladies, daylight's burning!"

Azusa and Tsumugi began grabbing the belts piled behind the command throne and linking them into the bolters, their armoured boots jangling in the sea of spent brass piled on the tank's roof. Yui saw something through the smoke, and triggered her flamer. A jet of fire leaped ten metres left of the Exorcist and splashed across the rubble; Mio heard shrieks of pain from burning traitors.

The _Crescendo_ had slowed, but had not stopped, not at all. It began to swerve back and forth, each turn delayed by several seconds, and Mio realized Nohi was attempting a serpentine evasion pattern. In a heavy, bulky, clumsy Exorcist. _Bless her heart,_ Mio thought, and fired a burst at a suspicious-looking doorway, destroying it and any potential threats behind it. She glanced up, and saw munitions from the south, from the Sororitas advance, streaking overhead and hammering the upper-tier Traitor fortifications.

Azusa and Tsumugi darted back around the command throne, on the friendly end of the bolters. "Guns loaded and clear!" Azusa yelled.

This close to her, Mio could _feel_ Ritsu's terrifying grin of anticipation. "Red range!" she shouted, with entirely too much delight, and kicked the switch in the command throne again. The bolters blazed again, and Ritsu thrashed on the splash cymbals for extra effect. The groundcars lining the street were flayed in a blistering salvo of small explosions, as were the unfortunate heretics sheltering behind them. The Exorcist ran up on the kerb, flattened the groundcars with a long, drawn-out howl of compressing metal and parts, and maybe one or two even more unfortunate heretics.

Mio realized she was singing Don't Say Lazy under her breath, and heard Tsumugi humming the tune gaily as she blasted a heretic scrambling over a barricade. The _Crescendo_ accelerated again, and they were suddenly out of the smoke cloud, in the middle of the giant intersection. It was about one hundred metres across, and crisscrossed with heavy las-fire, rockets, and autocannon rounds, all frantically seeking the runaway Exorcist. To the left, Mio saw the rubble-strewn construction fields, littering with fallen cranes, destroyed vehicles, and the massive hulks of burning fabrication machines. Hope, real, sensible, levelheaded hope surged through her when she saw the blue Rhinos grinding forward and the tiny blue dots of Battle-Sisters darting from cover to cover alongside them.

The second right-hand bolter exploded in a brief storm of metallic shards. Hot smoke blinded Mio; she crouched low and staggered a few steps forward to the command throne. "Ritsu!" she called, "Are you okay?"

An armoured hand appeared out of the gloom and seized Mio's left ear. "Those mutant-humping heathen _bastards!_ " Ritsu shrilled with righteous vehemence. Mio winced, even though Ritsu's voice was tinny by now. "They blew up the bolter _and_ the tom!"

The end of the intersection loomed as the Exorcist's breakneck speed cleared the smoke. A cordon of groundcars had hastily been drawn across the street, and a heavy bolter was peering out from them, blazing away at the Exorcist. Ritsu grabbed another pair of drumsticks from somewhere in the command throne. "Nohi," she ordered, "clear that roadblock!"

There was the roar of multiple missiles launching from behind Mio, and then just the inner-ear whine of total deafness as they came down barely thirty metres ahead of the Exorcist, blowing the cordon to the Warp and back.

Up on the top tier, farther over by the center of the construction fields, a repurposed Chimera decorated with barbed symbols of Chaos, beguiling sigils of Slaanesh, and equipped with oversized, overdecorated vox-casters trundled along the defenses. An ear-splitting collection of wails, warbles, and sirens blared from its vox-casters, invigorating the Chaos cultists and demoralizing the enemy. That was the idea, at least. Standing on top of the Chimera's turret, the Prophet-Conductor Bairnskein the Lesser could hear a different melody diluting his raucous worship hymns to the Prince of Excess. It was too cheerful, too straightforward. It didn't turn back on itself in a thousand different ways, did not twist and stimulate his body enough, did not wind up his emotions on a rack and then set them screaming free, it was dull dreck that somehow had survived five minutes among his lines.

This displeased Bairnskein greatly, immensely, morbidly, on too many levels to name. Clearly, this problem couldn't be waited out. He reluctantly removed his wire-pierced lips from the mouthpiece his distortion-horn, and shouted into his ornate vox-headset, "Captain Vinz! Is that cursed machine still running riot in the east defenses?"

Vinz did not answer immediately. Bairnskein was fine this this. Even in battle, one had to pause and exult in the myriad pleasures of life. The varied sparks of pain emanating from a thousand different perverse piercings, the percussion thuds of munitions going off all around, the primitive blare of the distortion-horn, Bairnskein welcomed them all. He reached down and overtightened the straps holding the ornate horn to his body, enjoying the stuffy sensation of his diaphragm and lungs being compressed. A moment later, heard Captain Vinz answer his hail.

" _My lord,"_ Vinz gasped, _"the abominably plain machine of the Sororitas is headed west, towards you, on the lower level. We have been unable to delay or destroy it. It came like lightning from the east…"_

Bairnskein indulged himself in a blast on the horn before answering. "You fail to destroy a single vehicle, and call yourself a worshipper of the Dark Prince, Vinz? For shame! Your only achievement is providing a somewhat entertaining light-show. Redirect your fire on the Sororitas advance, end them in an overindulgence of noise and shot."

" _Yes, my lord,"_ Vinz said, still breathing heavily.

Bairnskein cocked an ear that was more physio-reactive piercings than flesh. The obnoxiously cheerful music was coming closer.

"Vinz," the Prophet-Conductor said, "that Sororitas vehicle, it is the one playing that awful music, correct?"

" _My lord is correct, yes,"_ Vinz said.

Bairnskein smiled. "Thank you, Vinz," he said. He called down the Chimera's turret hatch, "Driver, take us down to the lower level! Prepare for combat!", and then toggled the arming switch of the distortion-horn to ON.


	3. Chapter 3

" _Hffl nnl!"_ Nohi warned.

Mio wished for her tinnitus to be gone already, and then grabbed madly at a organ pipe when she saw Tsumugi brace herself. A moment later, the _Crescendo_ veered right, ran up on the kerb, and then swung left into a U-turn so hard Mio lost her weak handhold, crashed into Mugi, and nearly went overboard. She felt the vehicle shuddering madly beneath her, and heard the dull squeal of stressed metal. Ritsu nearly fell over sideways, but somehow continued to whale on the drums, filling the air with bolter fire and spent casings.

The heretics manning the rubble-pile fortifications were ground to a paste as the Exorcist slid over them. Nohi revved the _Crescendo's_ engine, and turned the U-turn into a full circle turaround, resuming the advance to the west. Tsumugi shoved Mio back on her feet. Mio took shaky aim at the third-storey windows of the warehouse four buildings down and squeezed the trigger. The heavy bolter snarled, spit two seconds' worth of shells at the warehouse, and then began clacking strangely. Mio glanced down, and saw she had just used up her ammunition belt.

 _God-Emperor damn it…_ Mio loosened the shoulder strap from the heavy bolter, slung it over her left shoulder, and drew her bolt pistol. "Ritsu!" she shouted, "heavy bolter is dry!"

To Mio's relief, she half-heard the response. "Fffay agaih?" Ritsu called over the drums and gunfire.

"My heavy bolter is out of ammo!"

"Ropher!" Ritsu said.

A chain of thunderclaps echoed from the left. Mio glanced in the direction of the noise, and saw the Avenger fighters swoop overhead, engines screaming, guns blazing with solid sheets of flame. Bombs rained from their bellies and erupted in geysers of tan smoke and crackling red fire in the heretic lines. Ritsu whooped, and ended Don't Say Lazy with an excessively cymbal-laden encore.

Yui point up at the top tier. "Ehennih vehill, ooh o ohk!"

Mio followed Yui's finger. Just over two hundred metres ahead, another wide street led down from the top tier into the construction fields. At the top of the hill, Mio caught a blur of motion surging down it. She focused on it, and after a moment picked out the turret and shape of a Chimera from the blob. The warbling, hooting, heretical music Mio had heard earlier was spewing from it. The idea of audaciously standing atop armoured vehicles seemed to be catching today; Mio saw a figure standing on the roof of the vehicle.

"Nohi," Ritsu called on the squad vox, "can yoh dehstroy daht vehicle?"

"Yef, ma'am!" Nohi replied.

Mio preemptively covered her ears. A few moments later, the Exorcist's main armament roared again, and three missiles arced high into the sky and then plunged down towards the Chimera two hundred metres distant, now at the one o' clock position relative to the Exorcist.

The Chimera slalomed back and forth wildly; Mio decided the driver had to be even more mad than Nohi. The Exorcist's missiles came down with blows that shook the earth, but the effects of the target moving and the rapid launch meant the Chimera narrowly escaped the missiles.

"Ritsu!" Mio called, "Orders!"

Ritsu's head twitched back and forth as she scanned the battlefield, drumming something cymbal-heavy and definitely heavy metal in origin. The Chimera skidded onto the lower tier and turned head-on towards the Exorcist. Mio saw the enemy vehicle more clearly now: gaudy purple-and-laser-green paint, sigils of Chaos painted on in jagged pink brushstrokes, banners of skin snapping in the wind, barbed vox-horns blaring heretical music, all trimmed with curling iron spikes. The turret mounted an autocannon, and just behind the turret, standing before what looked like a terrible accident between a truckload of plumbing parts and a few giant vox-amplifiers, was a man wearing the most ridiculous brass instrument Mio had seen. It had the head of a tuba, a plethora of valves like a saxophone, enough tubing for a section of horns, and strange capacitors crackling with fuchsia-coloured lightning. Additional tubes ran from the instrument and into the man, for some sinister and unknown purpose, and the man himself was barely visible. Mio saw the glint of metal, lots of metal, in his face, a fiendish grin, and little else. He and his Chimera were still a hundred eighty-five metres distant.

Mio saw Ritsu's fingers tighten on the drumsticks. "Mugi, Mio, Azusa, ready krak grenades!" she called. "Yui, ready the flamer! Nohi, target enemy vehicle on our twelve, ramming speed!"

" _Yes, ma'am!"_ Nohi cheered.

Mio leaned down by Ritsu and shouted, "Plan?"

"Ram 'em, flame 'em, take 'em!" Ritsu replied. "Take the initiative, Mio! I trust you!"

Feeling somewhat reassured and mostly anxious, Mio unhooked a krak greande from her belt. Nohi whooped a battle cry as the Exorcist accelerated; the squad crouched down as low as they could. Las-bolts and bolter shells chipped desperately at the Exorcist as it sped towards the Chimera on a collision course. Mio jumped as a las-bolt spattered off her pauldron, but considered herself better off than the left splash cymbal, which was all but obliterated by a stray solid round.

Ritsu hammered the drum kit again, with another encore for Fluffy Time's finale, even faster and heavier than before. The bolters sang, and the oncoming Chimera sparked with shell impacts, some of the profane banners and more fragile decor shredded by the fire. The heretic with the horn blew a response from his instrument; a harsh, atonal shriekof noise shot from the gaping tuba mouth, visible as a cone of grey-lavender distortion, shot through with crackling pink sparks. Mio's stomach lurched at the sight of Warp-magic. Even though the blast dispersed moments later, Mio still heard the unnatural noise echoing over the battlefield, and caught a whiff of ozone on the ragged breeze.

Ritsu threw herself into the performance, limbs flying and hair swirling in a display of headbanging that would have dear old Sawako's full approval. Mio fired her bolt pistol at the Chimera, more to blot out the heretic's unnatural noise than for any other purpose. The heretic with the horn responded in kind, sending forth discordant, outrageously loud blasts of sound and energy from his cursed instrument.

The distance between the two vehicles closed rapidly. Incoming fire petered out, the other heretics probably fearful of hitting their own vehicle. Mio thought of expending her bolt pistol's magazine, saw the Chimera pass the forty-metre mark, and decided she had too little time. She saw more figures suddenly climbing onto the roof of the Chimera, possibly from the rear hatch of the vehicle.

"Ritsu!" she shouted.

"For the Emperor, the Order, and cake after Mass!" Ritsu bellowed. "HOLD ON!"

That was it, there was nothing for it. Mio howled in unison with Yui, Azusa, and Tsumugi, wrapped one arm around Mugi's backpack, and hooked the other into the back of the command throne. The new heretics on top of the Chimera opened fire with autoguns, and the head heretic blew a piercing note on his horn. A spear of crackling pink energy lanced from the horn's mouth, bridged the last ten metres, and hit the Exorcist square on with a _crack_ of rending metal.

WHAM

The Exorcist and Chimera, two vehicles each weighing over forty tonnes, crashed against each other and stopped dead. Mio and the other Sisters lurched, nearly thrown from their handholds. Mio heard metal shriek and groan, heard the prolonged rattle of objects inside the Exorcist rolling around. Yui's flamer rasped, throwing a tongue of orange-yellow fire out. Mio, Mugi, and Azusa hurled their krak grenades, and the heretic with the horn blew a massive bass note from his instrument. A cone of distortion-energy swept the roof of the Exorcist, blew the flamer's gout of fire off to the left, deflected a krak grenade over to the right, and sent Mio's grenade hurtling back towards her.

Mio instantly raised an arm and slapped the grenade away to the right, and pulled Tsumugi down. The grenade went off a moment later with a report that deafened Mio in her right ear. Her left ear wasn't much better, having to filter in the raucous joy of Ritsu's speed-drumming and the awful parping of the heretic leader's horn. Warp-energy tore at Ritsu's drum kit, and bolter shells skidded through the air around the heretic leader, only a few breaking through his sorcerous ward to punch holes in his horn. Mio saw one of the leader's minions make a mad dash across the Chimera's roof for the _Crescendo_ , and was justly executed by Ritsu's sheeting bolter-fire. The others huddled behind the massive vox-amplifiers and plinked away with their autoguns.

Barely audible over the cacophony of battle, Ritsu shouted, "Sisters! Flank them!"

"Yui, Azusa, take the left!" Mio called, drew her combat knife in her left hand, and leaped off the right side of the Exorcist. Tsumugi followed, and they ran alongside the Chimera. The leader was turning to his right, away from Mio; his soldiers behind the vox-amplifiers turned their fire on Mio. Autogun slugs rattled against Mio's armour; she clenched her jaw, raised her left arm to protect her face, and popped off return fire with the bolt pistol.

"Frag out!" Mugi shouted. A grenade dropped among the heretics, and they scrambled in all directions, two falling off the Chimera in their haste. Mio crouched against the Chimera and emptied her bolt pistol's magazine into the two unlucky heretics. The grenade went off, cutting short a scream of terror with a wet tearing noise. Mio put several rounds into each of the two heretics just before her, shot them each in the head for good measure, and reloaded her pistol.

Mio glanced at Tsumugi, who had stowed her bolter and drawn her own bolt pistol and combat knife. "Ready?"

Mugi grinned. "Your call."

"Over the top! For the Emperor!" Mio shouted, scrambling up the Chimera's flank. She crested the roof of the vehicle, and a blurry boot smashed into her face. Spluttering with fury and pain, Mio tried and failed to regain her perch, and toppled backwards off the Chimera. She landed on the battered cobbles of the boulevard with a _thud,_ head swimming, a nauseatingly greasy feeling permeating her mind.

As Mio picked herself and her weapons up, she saw Tsumugi make it up, and barely dodge the same boot. It was the heretic leader, managing to blow his horn at the Exorcist while he kicked at Tsumugi. Mugi hauled herself onto the Chimera's roof, using her right elbow as leverage, and slashed at the leader with her knife, drawing blood from his calf. Mio staggered upright, raised her bolt pistol, unloaded the whole magazine at the heretic leader.

To her surprise and terror, Mio's bolter shells seemed to curve around the heretic leader's figure. Only a few shells hit home, and those took chunks out of his instrument. The twisted horn wrapped all around him in a vinelike tangle of pips, trickling pink Warp energy from various orifices and holes. Mugi grabbed the leader's boot and tried to pull him down; he cackled and blew a long, wailing note on the horn, arching his back. Pink lightning flashed around him, snapped around Tsumugi, and hurled her off the Chimera.

Mio's pistol clacked empty, just as Tsumugi crashed to the ground. For a moment, Mio feared the worst; but then Mugi scrambled back to her feet, and Mio charged the Chimera again. "Yui, Azusa, kill him, kill the leader!" Mio shouted into the squad vox.

" _We're pinned down, right by the Chimera! The other side!"_ Azusa replied.

"Azusa, smoke incoming!" Mio said. She pulled a smoke grenade from her belt, armed it, and threw it over the Chimera. The heretic leader mistook it for a frag grenade and ducked, dropping to one knee. Mio jumped onto the Chimera's flank, scrambled up it, and this time made it on top. She raised her bolt pistol, already firing, and yelped with pain as the heretic leader swung his ungainly horn and knocked the weapon out of her hand.

Mio lunged at the heretic and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him close. He snarled at her, grabbed at her neck with his right hand, and blew a long note on the horn. Warp-energy screamed from the tuba-mouth just above and to the right of Mio's head. The electric funk of ozone filled the air, as did the sickly-sweet scent of pure Chaos. Mio screamed back, shoved his hand away, and jammed her knife into him, puncturing flesh and metal.

"Weak!" the heretic crowed. "You had promise, so much promise when the machines collided! The possibility of noise beyond imagining was there!"

Mio snarled and slugged him in the jaw. She heard teeth break, heard bone crack, but the heretic laughed madly and twisted his hips, smashing Mio on the head with the horn's mouth. Mio staggered, saw the heretic's leather-clad knee come up to meet her face, and then blood and flashes of pain filled her vision. She clawed at him, hung on, found a gap in the horn's winding pipes with her knife and shoved it in.

"Mio!" Tsumugi shouted. Mio heard a bolt pistol bark, and then another ululating wail of the horn. It sounded too loud, too lonely, too uncontested. Something was wrong, something had changed.

Mio realized what had happened amid a flash of agony as the heretic leader yanked a chunk of hair from her head. Ritsu's drumming had stopped.

The next thing Mio knew, she had been thrown to the roof of the Chimera, and crashed against its turret. She raised her arm, scrambled upright. She'd lost her knife; it was still in the heretic. Through a stream of hot blood running down her face, and white smoke drifting over the Chimera, she saw Tsumugi struggling with the heretic leader, who was still ranting on and on.

"Colourless! Dull! Devoid of breath!" he howled, fending off Mugi's knife with an right arm that was quickly becoming less of an arm and more of a collection of shredded flesh and leather. He seemed to be enjoying it, judging from the horrible rictus grin deforming his already over-pierced face. "And yet, there is promise! There is raw talent in your skillless limbs! You can yet be the vessel for the fantastic, incredible disharmonies of the Dark Prince himself!"

Mugi slammed a fist into the heretic's gut. It was blunted by the pipes, however, and the heretic headbutted Mugi, wormed one leg around hers, and threw her off balance. Mugi crashed to the roof of the Chimera. The heretic, choking on laughter and his own blood, pull Mio's knife from his side, and made to bury it in Mugi's eye.

A cymbal whirled past Mio from the right and hit the heretic's wrist. It drove his blow down, and the knife skittered off Tsumugi's gorget. Ritsu dashed past Mio, kicked the heretic in the head, and dragged Mugi out of his immediate reach. "Yui, now!" she shouted.

Mio glanced left, just in time to see Yui aim her flamer and let loose. A jet of purifying fire washed over the heretic leader, and this time Warp magic could not save him. He screamed, really screamed, as the fire took hold in the ragged flesh of his right arm, in his deformed head, on his precious instrument, and writhed as the burning promethium ate away his unholy form.

"Encore!" Ritsu ordered. Yui hosed the heretic once more, and he became a living mannequin of fire, dancing and writhing macabrely, screaming in either agony or disturbing ecstasy. The fire leaped to the vox-amplifiers and began eating into them eagerly. The heretic stumbled in Ritsu's direction, and she stepped forward and caught him by the throat with one hand.

"By the power vested in me by the God-Emperor of Mankind," Ritsu declared, "I execute you for crimes of heresy against the Imperial Faith, for treason against Imperial rule, for wanton murder and destruction of an Imperial world and its civilians, and for an infinity of offences committed against the perfectly decent music of the Imperium!" And with that, she drove a drumstick deep into the heretic leader's eyeball.

The winding shriek that tore from the heretic's throat put all his other exclamations to shame. He grasped at Ritsu, and was punched aside by several well-aimed bolter shells from Azusa. The horn squealed and whined, sending arcs of pink lightning snapping into the air. The vox-amplifiers blew out in a blare of white noise as the lightning tore into them. Ritsu backed up, flinching as one bolt of lightning caught her, scarring her armour and frizzing her hair out. The squealing of the horn reached a fever pitch, and it burst open in a flash of unholy light.

Mio saw horn and heretic stretch straight up, the heretic's scream echoing into an infinity of agony. Then there was a thunderclap of displaced air, and a pile of smoldering bones clattered to the roof of the Chimera.

Tsumugi stood up, rubbing her head with one hand, her other held out warily. "Is…is he dead?" she asked.

Ritsu straightened her back with pride. "He's purged, good and proper," she said. She prodded the bones with her boot, and made a pouty face. "Took the drumstick with him, though."

Azusa grabbed Ritsu and pulled her down as a volley of las-bolts pattered over the Chimera. The other Sisters crouched and took cover behind anything available.

Azusa said, "Ma'am, I suggest we take cover behind the Chimera!"

"Great idea! Follow me!" Ritsu rolled unceremoniously off the Chimera's south-facing side, and the squad scrambled after her.

Mio helped Ritsu up, and then took stock of her own self. She's lost the bolt pistol and knife, and realized she'd lost the valuable heavy bolter as well. Mio was on the verge of panicking when Tsumugi joined her and pointed to the heavy bolter, broken strap and all, lying by the _Crescendo_. She rushed to it and made sure it was in one piece, and then joined Azusa, Tsumugi, and Yui in maintaining a watch for hostiles.

"Nohi," Ritsu called over the squad vox, "Nohi, do you read?"

A groan of pain came over the vox. _"I copy. Driver is dead. My assistant driver and I are both wounded but operational. Orders?"_

"Reverse left into cover," Ritsu said. Mio stepped aside as the battle-scarred Excorcist growled and began to move. She scanned the heretic lines, and saw there were a great many more smoking craters in them than before. A shout from Yui pulled her gaze away from the enemy: "Movement in the buildings, south, twenty metres!"

Mio grabbed a piece of rebar and hefted it as a club. The other Sisters huddled beside the Exorcist as Ritsu shouted at Nohi to pull behind the Chimera wreck. Mio watched the half-collapsed warehouses before them. There, coming through the alleyway, several figures, armoured…familiar…

Mio called, "Delta Sigil Primaris! Delta Sigil Primaris!"

The figures halted. Mio saw blue armour, gold trim…it had to be more Sisters from the advance. But she used the code phrase, just in case. The Archenemy was infinitely devious, after all.

A powerful female voice bearing the tone of someone over a century old and used to being obeyed barked back, "Primaris Vox Alpha! Identify yourself!"

Ritsu stepped up by Mio. "Squad Tainaka, Fourth Bombardment Company. What can I do for you, ma'am?"

Canoness Patricia and her Celestians strode out of the mess of corrugated metal and shattered rockcrete slabs. Ritsu, Mio, and the rest of the squad dropped to one knee each, Mio planting the piece of rebar down like a chainsword.

"Rise," Patricia ordered. She glanced around the scene twice, taking in the battered Sisters, the smoking heretic defenses, the Exorcist lumbering indecisively behind the Chimera wreck. " _Glorious Crescendo,_ " Patricia said, "this is Canoness Patricia, do you read?"

Ritsu coughed deferentially. " _Crescendo_ lost her main vox. We're using channel eight on the squad vox."

Patricia made the adjustment to her vox, said, " _Crescendo,_ turn ninety degrees and reverse up to the pile of rockcrete behind you, and stand by."

Nohi voxxed an affirmative, and the Exorcist maneuvered into the ruins. Patricia and Squad Tainaka moved behind the Chimera wreck. Mio saw Patricia glancing between the heretic vehicle and the Exorcist and its drum kit.

"Sister Ritsu," Patricia said, "there is a drum kit attached to the _Crescendo's_ command throne."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Explain why there is a drum kit attached to the _Crescendo's_ command throne, Sister Ritsu."

Mio felt sweat roll down her neck. Ritsu somehow kept a cheery, if strained, smile on her face and said, "It's a field modification added to disrupt the heretics' defence with the holy music of the Emperor."

Mio snuck a glance at Patricia. The brown-haired woman's expression was stern and unreadable. She said, "Explain, Sister Ritsu, why the _Crescendo_ is here and not with the Fourth Bombardment."

"We got lost, ma'am. Our vox was knocked out during an enemy ambush. Recon revealed we were due east of the heretic lines, and I ordered a charge into their lines to disrupt their defence."

Patricia took a look at the Chimera, and at a Celestian carefully bringing a blackened skull down from it. "Explain, Sister Ritsu, how the heretic commander Bairnskein is dead, and his command vehicle destroyed."

Ritsu blinked. "That was Bairnskein, ma'am? I…I thought he was an enemy commander, but I didn't guess…" She collected herself. "He came roaring down the hill looking for a fight. We rammed him, boarded the vehicle, and Sister Yui dealt him the killing blow with holy fire, ma'am."

Yui piped up, "Sister Superior Ritsu stabbed him in the eye with a drumstick, ma'am!"

Patricia glared at Yui. "Thank you for the additional information, Sister Yui."

"It was totally _metal,_ ma'am!" Yui added. Azusa elbowed her, and Yui shut up.

Patricia glanced at the drum kit, glanced at Ritsu, and then glanced at the remaining enemy defences. "Squad Tainaka," she said, "overwatch our left flank, stand by for orders." She got out a dataslate and began coordinating the advance. Mio glanced around, and could not keep a stupid smile of joy and relief from splitting her face when she saw Avenging Choir Rhinos advancing up the lower tier, backed up by Battle-Sisters and loyal PDF.


	4. Chapter 4

Epilogue

With a little difficulty, Mio maintained a steady and clear mind, letting thoughts come and go one at a time. She had her eyes closed, but could hear the echoes of distant noises bounce through the vast interior of the cathedral. She could smell the rich, sweet scent of incense, the coldness of the massive stone blocks that made up the cathedral, and a faint hint of oil and sacred unguents from the caretaker-servitor. She adjusted her posture, and the pew, made of venerable, centuries-old wood, creaked under her. Mio stiffened, half-expecting a chastisement from another Sister. But there was only the quiet, the murmur of activity elsewhere, and reverently quiet hymns to the Emperor, piped through the angelic figures set high in the cathedral's vaults.

Mio heard another creak, more distant, that of a door. She heard voices, and recognized Ritsu's among them. Mio breathed in slowly, breathed out slowly, said a closing prayer, and opened her eyes. She stood and exited the cathedral at a relaxed and unhurried pace.

As Mio walked out of the cathedral, she saw Ritsu coming towards her. She was stiff and formal at first; then, when the click of a lock engaging sounded from one of the doors in the hallway, Ritsu's shoulders slumped, and she heaved a long, deep, obviously relieved sigh.

"How did it go?" Mio asked, falling into step with Ritsu.

Ritsu shrugged and fidgeted with her aquila necklace. "Pretty good. For starters, I'm alive and still a Sister Superior," she said, her voice low to dissuade any potential eavesdropping Emperor-botherers. "The fate of the Exorcist-drum-kit-arrangement is currently undecided, and I'll probably never get that set back. Thank the Emperor for roving-merchant-antique sales, am I right?"

"Any more penance?" Mio asked.

"Nope!" Ritsu said. "Patricia declared we are one hundred percent heresy-free. She made a few smart remarks about my combat skills, and put me up for mandatory drilling with Sakura." She scowled. "Not looking forward to that."

Mio hesitated a moment before giving Ritsu's shoulder an encouraging squeeze. "Ritsu, you survived a Chaos commander. You'll deal with Sister Sakura just fine."

The mention of their recent victory brought a gleam to Ritsu's eye. "Did you see the look on her face when we were officially credited for Bairnskein's death?" she said, grinning again.

Mio nodded. "Yes, I did."

"Absolutely worth all the suffering of drilling with her," Ritsu said.

"Did the Canoness say anything else?" Mio asked.

"Oh! Yes!" Ritsu exclaimed, and this time pulled Mio to one side. "Are you ready?" she whispered.

Mio glanced up and down the corridor. No one was in sight. "For what?" she asked.

"No, are you _really_ ready for this?" Ritsu asked. "You gotta be ready for this surprise, it's big!"

Mio raised an eyebrow. "Ritsu, I'm getting worried."

Ritsu rolled her eyes. "Come on, Mio! You gotta play along for this one! It means a lot."

Mio sighed, leaned in, and whispered, "Okay, Ritsu, I'm ready. What's the big surprise?"

Ritsu glanced over her shoulders, looked back to Mio, cupped her hands to her mouth, and whispered so quietly that Mio barely heard, "Patricia gave After-scholam Tea Time the performance approval seal."

Mio felt her brow knit as she lined up the words, ran them through her head again, and came up with nothing. "Um…" she said, "…what's that mean?"

Ritsu stared at her. "Mio," she said, her voice rising, "that means we can set up and play in the convent, in the city, anywhere under Order law, and jam our hearts out! And Sister Sakura can tattle all she wants, she can't do anything about it! We've got it _made!"_

Mio uncovered her ears. Ritsu's triumphant shout was still echoing along the corridor. "Oh," she said. Mio recalled how long it had been since she'd played her bass, and how much longer it had been since she, Ritsu, Yui, Mugi, and Azusa had played together. "You mean, we're being encouraged to play now?"

"Uh huh," Ritsu said.

"The _Canoness_ is encouraging us to play?" Mio said.

"Yup."

Mio nodded. "And we're going to tell the others, right?" she asked.

Ritsu grinned. "We're going to tell the others, celebrate with an extra-special round of dessert, and then fill this place with the joyful noise of the Emperor until evening mealtime."

Mio felt a surge of fuzzy warm nostalgia wash through her, bringing with it memories from the scholam, the afternoon sun streaming into the Light Music Club's room, and the joy and satisfaction of performing for their scholam.

"Just like old times," Mio murmured.

"Just like old times," Ritsu agreed.

***End***

Warhammer 40,000 is owned by Games Workshop, K-ON! is owned by Kyoto Animation. This is purely a fan story and intends no copyright infringement.


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